


I got your back

by DaceyBear



Series: Arya x Gendry week [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, I Got Your Back, Post-War for the Dawn, Written in half an hour, arya x gendry week 2020, axgweek 2020, axgweek2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaceyBear/pseuds/DaceyBear
Summary: Written very belately for axg week 2020, prompt 2: "got your back".
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry
Series: Arya x Gendry week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1868434
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	I got your back

**Author's Note:**

> This is a teeny tiny fic brough about from late night inspiration. It just jumped on me and I had to write it. I'm imagining this post-canon, Arya is about 22 and Gendry 26. I know where they are here... can you find out? I hope to follow up on it! I hope you enjoy, even if it's quite rough around the edges.
> 
> This is in the same universe of "The Acorn Dreams the Oak" (a one-shot ficlet written for axgweek's first prompt) and "About Oaths and Wolves" (a WIP reunion fic which amounts more than fifteenhundred words already)  
> This is post-canon, around three years after "The Acorn Dreams the Oak".

"If I learn that grey-robed _camelcunt_ is within a hundred yards of this room I'll eat his liver when this is over! _Aaaaaaaaaaah! Oooooh!_ " She grabbed the bedpost with hands like claws and bent her body forwards in agony. A few deep breaths, more deeper groans, and the she-wolf was upright again, her eyes livid. "Did he hear me scream?? If he has an inkling about what's going on I swear I'll gut whoever told!" She looked at each of them there, one and then the other, then sat down on the hardwood chair placed beside the bed. There was a sigh, then came much gentler words. "I want water. My throat can't keep up with all this screaming. I have to remember not to scream. And bread, too, if there's any." 

Of course there was bread. There was water, freshly drawn from the well, chicken broth, soft wheat rolls and dark rye bread, scrubbed raw carrots and young radishes, grapes red and green, sweet-tart pomegranate juice, strong dry red wine, lemons and oranges, and even a honeycake. They would not be lacking for food, and if Arya wanted anything else he'd fetch it for her, even if he had to cross the desert. No, not that. He’d send someone, anyone, but he wouldn’t leave the room, wouldn’t leave her side at all. Not until… what a scary thought.

Wylla gave her the fluffy wheat rolls, and Arya inhaled them like the beast she was. That was one reason only the midwife was with them. The maester had explained the perils of eating between the pains. _The blood goes to the gut, my lady. You cannot eat when the pains start, it’s not safe._ Gendry trusted Arya more than any studied old man, and when she said Maester Sims was full of shit, he believed it. She was gulping down water from a fancy goblet. Amethysts inlaid in the silver winked at Gendry with the faint light that poured into the room. Dawn was close approaching. 

Summer had brought about days where the sun would come up as early as he remembered in his memories of waking up to work the bellows for Master Tobho Mott, a lifetime ago. Before the wars, before he found her, before he lost her, before he met her for the first time, even. When they had met it was summer too, there were still ears of sweetcorn along the Kingsroad when they'd been children with the Night's Watch men. The taste of roasted corn seemed just as distant in time as the moment he had entered this room just yesterday. _The day is longer than the night by four whole hours, now. That means we’ve been here ten hours._

Arya was groaning again, and getting up with hands on her lower back. “I need the privy.” Her voice was frantic, her eyes completely dazed. “Is there a chamberpot in this room? Did anyone think to bring a chamberpot!?”

Gendry scrambled for the pot under the bed, but Wylla stopped him with a strong hand, and he realized she was laughing. She moved to stand besides Arya. 

“I touch you now, m’lady” she said with the gentlest voice. Arya took a long breath in as the corpulent maid laid a tentative hand on her bare belly. “It’s the babe wanna be born, and you is fierce to bring it forth, m’lady. Is not the privy you need.” 

“Wylla,” Arya said through gritted teeth. “Do not call me my lady. I’m naked, I’m hurting, I’m a feral direwolf and I’ll have your liver too if you don’t stop.”

“Sorry m’dear. I is old, I forget meself. I is wise, tho. You need not the privy. You feeling it? The babe wanna be born, I call.”

“ _Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”_

Gendry watched as Arya’s knees buckled under her weight. _Is it from the pain?_ It didn't matter, he was behind her in no time, sitting on his heels, cradling her with his arms. Wylla smiled at him and nodded, then walked around them. 

“Tis good, m’lord, support her.” She bumped on Gendry’s back with something. It was the chair, he realized. “Sit up, m’lord.” Wylla was saying.

Gendry grimaced “I’m really not a lord,” he said as he raised. He didn’t want to upset the woman - Arya could not care about such trivial thing right now, but he did - only he was the furthest thing from a lord, in truth. He was a bastard blacksmith at worst, a landless knight at best, and how he’d come to put a baby inside Arya, of House Stark, still befuddled him. _Well, not the how of it, but_ …

"It make no matter what you isn't, son. You is the father. A good one, I dare hope. You let her lean on you now." Arya was panting between his legs, still on her knees. Trembling and pale though she was, she was strong. _The strongest person I’ve ever known_. Naturally she found her might again. She set a foot on the floor in front of her, so she was kneeling on one leg, and then held on to Gendry’s knees behind her to raise herself to a squatting position. Wylla had to be truly happy with what unfolded in front of her; there was a fond smile on her face, so broad Gendry could see the gap where she had lost a tooth.

“Tis perfect, dear. You doing so well! You is fierce. Let us see that babe, m’dear. The babe know the way. You may let come.” Wylla crouched in front of them. “You doing so well dear. You is. I know the hurt. It’ll pass, promise. I can see the head. You wanna feel the head?”

Gendry couldn’t see her face, but he could _feel_ Arya’s smile. That’s why she didn’t want the maester around. This last turn of moon, Sims had been rattling on and on about draughts for the pain, and the necessity of lying still all through labour so not to waste the strength she’d need when came time to push. _Bloody idiot._ Arya let go of his left leg and and brought a hand between her legs, and then burst into crying. Wylla dried her tears. “Don’t push, you hear me? The force is not in you, is in the babe. He is nothing to be rid of! Just open up. Calm when the pain come next. Lean back, dear.”

But Arya didn’t. She just grabbed on Gendry’s knees with such strength she might have ripped through his breeches, cotton as they were, and tensed her entire body between his legs. He never cared about the lost garments. Gendry leaned forward to put his lips to her ear. “I got your back,” he whispered. His voice unwinded something inside her. She drew a huge breath, as if she were emerging from deep within the ocean, and leaned on him to let her body sag. 

“With each pain you is closer to the last,” Wylla was saying, but he paid her no mind. Arya had dropped her head back on his chest, so he could see her eyes now. _Valyrian steel eyes._ They weren’t dazed anymore, they were glittering and sharp, so alive it was disconcerting. He kept his eyes on hers. 

“Our babe will have your eyes,” it was but a whisper coming from her lips. “Bright blue and deep. So beautiful. I want to see his eyes, Gendry,” she pleaded.

“You will,” he was saying back. “She’ll be here any moment now, our babe, you’ll hold her in your arms and I’ll hold you two.” Another pain shot through the she-wolf, she scrunched her face and uttered guttural sounds from deep within her chest. Then it was over, and she was looking at him again.

“I can feel him on his way. I felt his head, I think he’s bald.” She was chuckling. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen or hoped to see: Arya’s eyes were molten silver pools on her pale face, her smile was so happy, her belly so big and long, her naked form between his legs so strong, he felt his eyes well with tears. 

“A bald baby girl,” he mused. “I never thought-” Another pain came, but this time she only moaned, the sound so much like pleasure it almost made his blood hot. But it was over again, and their child remained within the womb. He started right where he had stopped “I never thought we’d have a bald baby girl. You look good bald.” Arya’s hair was bound in a tousled braid now, but it fell to her shoulders when loose. She had pretty hair, brown and unremarkable, unlike everything else about her. If Gendry told it true, he found her most beautiful with her hair shorn about the head. She was beautiful anyway. _She is the most beautiful right now_. 

“You think it’s a girl?” She asked him. “Why is that?” Before he could answer, another pain, another sweet moan, but then the moan turned into a stinging screech unlike any sound he’d ever heard. In a blink there was something in Wylla’s hands, _my daughter,_ he thought, but, _what is that, that’s not what a babe should look like,_ Gendry despaired, and Wylla crying too just added to his worry.

“A miracle!” the woman chanted. “A miracle!! Mother have mercy on we sinners, tis babe is blessed!” She handed Arya the bundle, and then he saw: the baby was veiled with a thin membrane, a see-through coverlet in which it floated. Gendry pulled Arya by the elbows to sit her on his lap. She winced, then kissed him, and their tears mixed on their faces. Then Wylla hovered over them both and ripped the caul, and Arya and Gendry both became drenched. _My daughter. No, my son,_ he saw. A baby boy, not bald at all, but full of thick black hair, and fuzzy all over. His eyes were still closed. _I am crying. Why am I crying so much._ He kissed Arya again, and she kissed back briefly, and looked down to settle the baby within her arms.

“I thought you were bald,” was the first thing she said, touching the tip of his nose. “You are not bald at all, little one. Of course not.” She leaned back on Gendry’s chest again, and tried to put their son on her breast. It was so simple. He latched, she gasped, and he opened his eyes, bright blue and deep like she wished for.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to have an idea of how Arya and Gendry were positioned during the last moments of birth, here is a  
> [picture](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a54a72c12abd9f5f251537b/1533436904342-GN7CW9TR1NM84K1966QT/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kPZsLmltmfhb8ONwpEw1rgh7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QHyNOqBUUEtDDsRWrJLTmLLxGPZs9cXJqW7PQ94qJw9Vb5AemNNRo8dqeapHfPCyoIF_yBzihWmHICGH5wWa1/sydney+birth+photographer+-+woman+birthing+in+supported+squat+position?format=750w) and here is a [drawing](https://www.sciencesource.com/archive/Squatting-with-Partner-Birthing-Position-SS2873521.html#/SearchResult&ITEMID=SS2873521)  
> If you want to know what en caul birth looks like (it’s graphic):  
> [pretty babies en caul](https://www.today.com/parents/7-amazing-photos-rare-en-caul-births-t108765)


End file.
